Wild
Always, always, there is another skin growing over this scaffold of bones and blood
Last night during the evening constitutional around the yard with Bonnie, when we rounded the garden I noticed a tiny eggplant pushing out of the womb of its blossom-mother. I bent to peer in closer and my eyes were rewarded by not one, but two little eggplant babies straining forth into the light! It was love at first sight. I’ve grown eggplant before but there is always something so soulful in the first glimpse of deep purple skin.
First thing this morning, I donned my robe to head out and take some photos of the new babies. My camera lens kept fogging up; the moisture in the air was so heavy, even at that early hour. I couldn’t find the right light and in the middle of the shoot, a surprise downpour chased me back indoors.
But I am still thinking about how that lavender blossom gave birth to the plump plum of the eggplant fruit and the beauty of it can bring me to tears if I let it.
To listen to this post (and Bonnie snoring loudly):
I’ve been having trouble finding the words lately. There are too many questions in the air and my heart is struggling to keep up. When I have trouble with writing, I read, read, read. This week, I started re-reading an old favorite of mine, Women Who Run With the Wolves. I have read this book several times, but I never tire of its wisdom. The first time I read it I was a new bride, so young and sweet. I read with different eyes these days.
The author, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, is a Jungian analyst and a storyteller. Her life’s work has been collecting multicultural stories, myths, fairy tales, folk tales and using them in her work to help people re-connect with their natural, creative selves. The way the book is arranged, she shares a story and then goes through the analysis with the reader.
I’m reading very slowly this time around, taking notes and sitting with the words. As I read, my husband keeps teasing me about my “wild woman” coming out. The author describes the “wild woman” not as something untamed and dangerous, but as our natural self—before the demands of culture shaped our natures into something unrecognizable.
“[T]he word wild here is not used in its modern pejorative sense, meaning out of control, but in its original sense, which means to live a natural life, one in which the criatura, creature, has innate integrity and healthy boundaries. These words, wild and woman, cause women to remember who they are and what they are about. They create a metaphor to describe the force which funds all females. They personify a force that women cannot live without.”
I would change the term women in this quote to all people. Don’t we all need reminded sometimes of who we are and what we are about?
Currently, I’m reading the story of Vasalisa the Wise, which is a story about trusting your intuition. It’s sort of a more mystical kind of Cinderella-story. In this Russian tale, the sweet girl Vasalisa is sent into the woods by her jealous stepmother to retrieve a coal to reignite the fire in their hearth. The stepmother and her daughters hope that Vasalisa will not return—they know they send her into danger. In the forest, Vasalisa encounters Baba Yaga—a witch who represents the wild old mother in each of us (just as Vasalisa represents the innocent, too-nice, naïve part of our psyche). Baba Yaga makes the child perform certain tasks to earn the coal she will give her: wash her clothes, sweep her yard, prepare her food, separate mildewed corn from good corn, and see that everything is “in order.” Vasalisa performs all the tasks successfully with the help of a little doll given to her by her mother when she was on her deathbed (the doll represents the intuition handed down through the ages).
Dr. Estés says that these tasks Baba Yaga puts before Vasalisa teach her “how to take care of the psychic house of the wild feminine.” Washing the old hag’s laundry, in particular, is a beautiful symbol for “cleansing and purification of the entire bearing of the psyche.”
I’ve been thinking a lot about this cleansing ritual lately. As I sort through some hard truths about mothering grown-ups, it feels like a fine comb is being run over my spirit. I wash my worry thoughts over and over, trying to breathe new life into the worn and tattered ... and something inside of me is being scrubbed down, rubbed hard up against the washboard.
“ ... to wash her laundry is a metaphor through which we learn to witness and take on this combination of qualities [strength, endurance], and also to know how to sort, mend, renew these qualities by the purificatio, the washing of the fibers of being.”
It is a strange truth that letting go of one part of myself means welcoming in another. Always, always, there is another skin growing over this scaffold of bones and blood, this limping heart. This is the way of God—to continue conforming me to the image of his son. These seasons I move through edge me closer and closer to the holy. Oh, how far I have to go.
Still, the moments creep up on me lately, and I am often surprised by an unexpected and sudden flow of tears. Another kind of washing.
According to Dr. Estes’s analysis, every character in the story represents a part of one person.
And so, I have been reading the stories and putting myself in the place of various characters. It feels like I am being fortified for some important work—and then, I remind myself that life is important work. And this thought makes me grateful for the dam that has stopped the flow of words.
I will listen for a time, remember, re-familiarize myself with my inside voice. It feels rather like being born of a lavender blossom, growing a deep, soulful skin. Beauty birthing beauty.
Laura, this is so deeply gorgeous and whimsical -->'I noticed a tiny eggplant pushing out of the womb of its blossom-mother'
Sheer delight. You. Your words. Your attentive appreciation of His vast creation.
Thank you for this encouragement to read Women Who Run with the Wolves. I have never read it. I heard the story of Vasilisa and Baba Yaga early in my marriage. It took awhile to get my mother’s doll however…also appreciate the encouragement to read, read, read when the words go silent.